[98]
Such
arguments are specially useful when we are arguing
against the letter of the law, and are thus employed
by Cicero in the pro Caecina1: “[The interdict contains the words,] ' whence you or your household or
your agent had driven him.' If your steward alone
had driven me out, [it would not, I suppose, be your
household but a member of your household that had
driven me out]. . . . If indeed you owned no slave
except the one who drove me out, [you would cry,
'If I possess a household at all, I admit that my
household drove you out'].” Many other examples
might be quoted from the same work.
1 xix. 55. Quintilian merely quotes fragments of Cicero's arguments. The sense of the passages omitted is supplied in brackets. The interdict of the praetor had ordered Caecina's restoration. His adversary is represented by Cicero as attempting to evade compliance by verbal quibbles.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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